


the water in the basement

by narcissablaxk



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: 3x10 spoilers, Almost death makes you realize love trope, Angst, Angst with a happy ending?, Featuring your rival never left your side trope, Final fight but worse, I mean, Kreese goes to jail so, M/M, Panic Attacks, Season 3 Spoilers, Whump, blood cw, hospital visits, lawrusso, with a sprinkle of humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28717791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: Daniel gets to Cobra Kai in time to save Johnny, but will Johnny manage to save him?
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 17
Kudos: 304





	the water in the basement

Daniel was used to fighting through pain. That was how he learned to understand what a real fight was, back in the eighties. He didn’t go through a single confrontation that didn’t end with him gasping for air, holding his ribs or his stomach, bruises littering his body. Back then, he’d thought it weakness that his body would yield so easily. Getting hit, kicked, shoved _hurt_ , and surely that meant he was weak. 

But it wasn’t that he was weak. It was that he didn’t know how to keep himself from getting hurt. No one really did, did they? Not in a fight or outside of it. Once he learned that, taking a hit or two in a fight didn’t bother him much anymore. Sure, it hurt, but everything did. 

This was different. 

He expected a fight when he went to Cobra Kai. He knew Kreese was there, he knew what Kreese had done, and that Kreese was probably a more capable fighter. It didn’t matter. Once he’d seen his wrecked house, his daughter, bruised, bleeding, shaking from the encounter, it didn’t matter. Kreese was going to get the fight he wanted so badly. 

And then he saw Kreese looming over Johnny, choking him. Johnny, who had just warmly wished him Merry Christmas, who was now barely conscious, eyes rolling back in his head. He didn’t really remember how he got Kreese to release him – he remembered lodging a foot on the junction between Kreese’s neck and shoulder and shoving with all his strength – he was far more preoccupied with making sure Johnny was breathing. 

He’d leaned over him, hand on the side of his face, trying but not really succeeding in avoiding the search for a pulse, and then Johnny was coughing, the force of it pulling him upward and almost in Daniel’s face, but his eyes were still closed, so Daniel couldn’t really blame him. It was in the pull back that he spotted Robby. 

It was like walking into a battlefield when the war was already over – he was simply marking casualties down, trying to decide who could be saved and who couldn’t – and he never even managed to get to Robby. Kreese stopped him before he made it, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Johnny stumble his way over. 

That would have to be good enough. 

He let Johnny and Robby fall into the background of his thoughts to focus on Kreese. It was a constant uphill battle, climbing up a mountain without equipment, and Daniel was far too aware of what it felt like to be dangled off a cliff by someone who had no trouble causing extra pain. He remembered what made Johnny such a difficult opponent – offense – and if he tried to take the opportunities Johnny would have, he felt like the climb was a little easier. 

And then Kreese picked him up and sent him through the window. 

He landed hard on top of him on the concrete outside, and there was the pain that Daniel was used to fighting through. And as soon as he felt it, it was gone, pushed back by adrenaline and need. He was back on his feet in a moment, and Chozen’s teachings came back to him in a tidal wave that moved his muscles for him, and soon, Kreese was on his knees, looking up at him with barely concealed fear in his eyes. 

Johnny gave him a nod from the window, and Daniel knew what had to be done – but he was slipping; he felt like he was standing in his basement in Jersey when the pipe burst and filled the whole place with a foot of water. He breathed, a deep inhale, and felt nothing change. It wasn’t working. 

“Daniel?” 

Was that Johnny’s voice? He couldn’t really tell anymore – he could hear the sound of the basement, full of water, sloshing in his head, rushing in his ears, and the pain started coming back. Waves of it, crashing like the ocean, agony after agony, and he barely registered that Johnny had done something, hit Kreese again, because he was on the ground now, eyes closed, and Daniel was swiftly following. 

Strong arms caught him before he could land hard on the concrete again, and he heard Johnny’s voice like it was coming from down a tunnel, the words unintelligible, but the tone unmistakable. 

Fear. 

“Must not lose to fear.” 

***

Johnny caught Daniel when he swayed, a look in his eye that said he was looking at Johnny but didn’t really see him – and his arm snagged on the piece of glass sticking out of his side, a huge polygon of unbroken glass. The whole left side of his shirt was drenched in blood, enough that he could feel it soaking into his own shirt as he lowered Daniel to the ground. 

“Hey, LaRusso, come on, stay awake,” he fumbled for his phone in his pocket and remembered that he didn’t have one. “Fuck.” 

He watched Daniel breathe, his chest expanding, and then nothing happened. He let out a rattling sound that shook Johnny down to his core and he looked around, trying to find someone – but they were alone, which is probably exactly what Kreese wanted. 

Was he supposed to take the glass out? Was he supposed to leave it in? He didn’t know, but Daniel’s eyes were open again, looking through him. 

“Stay awake for me, LaRusso, okay, I’m going to get you help, I swear,” he sounded like a goddamn damsel in distress, like a fucking little girl, and he was so angry, furious at himself for throwing his phone into the ocean, for letting any of this happen. 

“Must not lose to fear.” 

“What?” he asked, leaning closer. He could feel Daniel’s rattling breaths now, even scarier when he could feel him struggling against his chest. “What did you say?” 

When he pulled back, Daniel’s eyes were closed, and the blood was starting to spread onto the pavement. He felt a desperate sound clawing its way up his neck and into his mouth, and was about to set it free when a shadow fell over him. He looked up, blinking past tears, expecting to see Kreese. 

But it was Robby, a wound on his forehead that probably needed looking at. He was looking down at Daniel with wide eyes, his mouth open. 

“Call someone,” Johnny choked out, and Robby’s eyes jumped to him like he’d forgotten he was there. “Robby, please.” 

And then he was gone, back into the dojo, running on unsteady feet, and Kreese was still where Johnny had left him, unconscious but obviously breathing. Johnny looked back down at Daniel, hands still on the wound on his side, applying pressure like he’d heard he was supposed to do, but the blood was seeping between the spaces of his fingers, and he wasn’t prepared for this much blood – the worst he’d seen was when Dutch fell off his bike and cut his head open. 

It was getting harder to breathe, harder to focus on what he was doing – his muscles were rigid, like he was trying to decide whether to fight or run, but that wasn’t a question here, and he couldn’t understand himself, couldn’t figure out why he was being like this, except that LaRusso hadn’t opened his eyes again, and every now and then he could make a sound that sounded almost like a cough, and he was pretty sure there was blood on the inside of his lips. 

“Ambulance is coming,” Robby’s voice said. 

He nodded, the movement shaking a tear loose that snaked down his nose without permission. 

“He looks bad.” 

“I don’t know what to do,” Johnny’s voice came out like a rasp, and he heard Robby take a step closer. “Don’t,” he said sharply. “Glass.” 

“Dad –”

Later, Johnny wouldn’t be able to tell anyone if it was that word or the sound of the ambulance that broke him. He didn’t know, really, they happened at almost the same time, and the next thing he knew, people were swarming him and asking him to move away, and they were saying things to each other that sounded like a language Johnny didn’t know and he was crying, and he knew that in an absent, out-of-body kind of way. 

One of the EMTs had to pull him away, with a stern word that he would get put in his own ambulance if he didn’t calm down, and he didn’t realize he was fighting her hold on his arm, but he was, enough that she looked alarmed. She told someone else that he was in shock or something, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting into that ambulance. 

“I have to –” God, talking hurt, and he was starting to feel the effects of the fight in his neck and his ribs. He pointed to the ambulance, and the EMT turned back to see the doors shutting. 

“They’re going to rush him into surgery when they get to the hospital, sir,” she said, the words sliding into his head and right back out, leaving nothing behind. “You can’t go with him.” 

“I _have to_ –”

Her hands were on his arm again. “There’s another ambulance coming,” she said, and he could tell she was trying to be soothing. “You can ride with them.” 

She sat him down on the curb and took a towel to him, explaining slowly that she was looking for wounds, but all Johnny could see was that she was wiping away blood, so much blood, and he knew it wasn’t his. None of it was his. 

“The boy has a concussion,” another EMT said when the lights of the second ambulance appeared. “We’re taking them all.” 

“He doesn’t look injured, except for the bruise on his neck,” the EMT said, and Johnny made the mistake of glancing down at the towel in her hand, red now instead of white. 

“He’s my son,” Johnny rasped out, every syllable scraped out of his neck by force. 

“And the man we took before?” she asked. “Who is he?” 

He didn’t answer. 

***

Daniel woke before he could open his eyes. He could feel a chill in his feet, a pain in his side, smaller epicenters of pain in different places, a dryness in his mouth, a pain in his throat, like it had been scraped clean with a dentist tool. He moved his hand, the one with a needle in it, he could feel it shifting under his skin, and landed on something warm. Someone’s hand. He took it and squeezed. 

He heard the person beside him shift and take his hand, felt the power in it, and knew, without opening his eyes, that it was Johnny. He could hear it in the way he breathed, the sound of the chair he was on scooting closer to him. 

“John –” he forced his eyes to open, even though the white light of the hospital was blinding, like his eyes had been closed for so long, and watched Johnny slowly come into focus. It was his eyes that came together first, the sharp blue a north star that Daniel followed until the rest of him was sitting beside him, eyes red-rimmed and tired, a bruise blooming on his cheekbone. “Wow, hey.” 

His voice was horrible – like the worst bronchitis he’d ever had, and judging by Johnny’s grimace, he knew it too.

But all of his tension – in the hard, straight line of his shoulders and back – relaxed at the sound of his voice, like he’d just shoved a huge weight off of him, and he let out a long breath. Daniel wondered what that meant. 

“There are some people who will want to see you,” he said, and his voice was just as ragged. He stood and stepped away from the bed, taking his hand with him, but his fingers trailed away like they were reluctant. 

The people he meant were his wife and kids, and as soon as he was gone Amanda, Sam, and Anthony were in the room, Anthony white in the face, holding fiercely onto his hand. Amanda, without makeup, bags under her eyes and worry in her brow. Sam, already crying, still bruised from the fight that sent him over to Cobra Kai in the first place. 

He realized he didn’t know what happened after –

“Kreese has been taken into custody,” Amanda supplied quietly. “Johnny gave a statement about what he did to you and him.” 

“And –”

“Robby is staying with us,” she added. “Until you’re out of the hospital, that is.” 

“Why until I’m out?” Daniel asked. “Johnny –”

“Has refused to leave the hospital since you got here,” Amanda finished. “He’s been here since you went into surgery three days ago.” 

“ _Three days_?”

“We’ve tried to convince him to go home,” Amanda continued. “But he wouldn’t hear of it.” Behind her, Daniel could see the little folded hospital blanket, the way the chairs had been pushed together. The foam cups in the trashcan, stained with coffee. Evidence of a stakeout, a careful watcher waiting for news.

“Amanda –”

“I know,” she said quietly, and Daniel had to believe her, because there were tears swimming in her eyes now, so much like their daughter’s. She cleared her throat. “The doctor should be coming by to talk to you –”

“What did they do?” he asked. He wanted to shift in the bed, he wanted to find where they’d cut him open, but the pain was just white and hot, so determining where it was coming from was like reaching through thick fog. 

“The glass you went through punctured your lung,” she said, the shake in her voice strong enough that Anthony let go of him to go hug his mom. “They said you’ll be okay, but –”

“They didn’t think you would…for a while,” Sam muttered from his side. “You lost –”

“You don’t have to say it,” Daniel hurriedly interrupted. Thinking about it focused the pain – he could feel it now, a phantom tear in his side and inside his body, like a letter-opener was wiggling its way past his skin again. “It’s okay.” 

The doctor came a while later, to tell him all that his wife and daughter had already mentioned. He was going to be there for a little while, so they could monitor his progress and his healing, and the doctor told him, like it was a secret, that if the ambulance had gotten there five minutes later, he’d be dead right now. Too much blood loss, not enough oxygen, something like that. Daniel stopped listening. 

He sat there with his family after the doctor left, Sam curled into his good side, her head on his chest, Amanda with Anthony, who fell asleep with his head on her lap, the television playing something he wasn’t watching. Once Sam dozed off, he looked over at her. 

“I didn’t –”

“I’m not angry at you, you know,” Amanda said softly. “For loving him.” 

“I don’t –”

“Whatever you want to call it, then,” she waved him off. “It’s not like I didn’t know. You were a different person the moment he walked into the dealership. You were so different I thought you’d become someone else, but that wasn’t it. You just became yourself.” 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, looking down at his daughter. 

“I know you are,” Amanda replied. “And I’m sure I’ll be angry about this in a year or so when I finally have the time to really think about it, but you almost died. Do what you’ve always wanted to do.” 

***

It was hours before Johnny managed to get back into Daniel’s room, alone. He left Daniel with his family and went downstairs to the cafeteria, where one of the guys working there gave him a sandwich and coffee without even asking what he wanted, and he sat there, alone at a table, wondering what he was going to do. 

He needed to go home, he needed to shower, he needed to see his son. Daniel was awake now, he was going to be okay. 

And then he looked down at his hands, where the blood had gotten into his nail beds, underneath his fingernails, and grimaced. He’d washed his hands a thousand times, he’d scrubbed until it ached, but the stain was still there. 

So he got in his car and he went home, where he showered and changed his clothes. He drove to the LaRusso’s house, where he managed to catch Robby unawares and got him to answer the door. That had taken hours, the talking and the yelling and the accusations. Kreese had wiggled his way into his son’s mind and digging him back out would take a long time. But he left feeling a little less hopeless. 

And he found Daniel alone in his room, staring up at the television, his hair a rumpled disaster, his brow furrowed in a way that told Johnny that he was in pain, and slipped inside. 

“You can call the nurse if you need more pain meds,” Johnny’s voice caught Daniel’s flagging attention and he turned toward him, grimacing at the movement. 

“Nah, I don’t need ‘em,” Daniel said. 

Undaunted, Johnny reached above him and pushed the button to call the nurse, his thumb pushing on it insistently. 

“Johnny!”

“Take the meds, LaRusso,” Johnny said, pulling up his usual chair to sit beside him. “At least take the meds for a day before you decide you’re too tough for them.” 

Daniel sighed and relented, falling back into the pillows. He held out his hand, patiently waiting for Johnny to take it. He furrowed his brows at the gesture, a little too intimate now that Daniel was awake and conscious. 

When he finally passed his hand over, Daniel didn’t hold it. He pulled it up to his face and studied the stained nails, his bottom lip between his teeth. 

“I heard you,” he said, his inspection of Johnny’s hand done. He let the hand fall back toward his side but didn’t let go of it. “Asking me to stay awake.” He looked up at him, brown eyes wide and transparently full of emotion. “Sorry I couldn’t.” 

“You never listen to me anyway,” Johnny murmured, and Daniel laughed, just for a moment, before the pain chased away the mirth. “I heard you.” 

“Hmm?” 

“Must not lose to fear.” 

“Okay, let’s get you some of that pain relief,” the nurse sing-songed, gliding into the room. “Oh, well, it’s nice to see you managed to change your clothes, Mr. Lawrence.” 

“ _Thank you_ , Doris,” Johnny grumbled. 

Daniel bit his lip to hide a smile. 

Johnny watched her fiddle with the IV bag and the rest of the machinery, pretending like he was engrossed in the process, even if he could feel Daniel’s eyes on him the whole time. He stubbornly refused to make eye contact. It was much more difficult to sit beside Daniel when he was awake, when he could turn his eyes on him and make him feel like he was being x-rayed, viewed inside out and somehow contorted and understood at the same time. 

“Be nice to him, Mr. LaRusso,” Doris said in a stage-whisper. “He’s been inconsolable since the ambulance brought you in.” 

“Has he?” Daniel asked, lifting an eyebrow. 

“Took us a whole day to get him to eat.” 

“Thank you, Doris,” Johnny said loudly. Doris laughed and patted him on the shoulder before leaving them alone again, which Johnny realized was probably just as bad as having her around. He could feel Daniel’s eyes on him again, searching, scrutinizing. 

“You were worried.” 

“You were bleeding everywhere,” Johnny said dryly. “I’d be an idiot to not be worried.” 

“But you were like…really worried,” Daniel squeezed his hand. “I’ve been told you were hysterical.”

“I wouldn’t say hysterical,” Johnny protested. “I wasn’t a little girl about it or anything.” 

“Sam said you cried.” 

“Yes, well…” Johnny sighed heavily. Daniel pulled his hand closer, close enough that he could release Johnny’s hand and touch his cheek instead, hands cold and a little clammy. “I was in shock. It’s a real medical thing.” 

“Right.” 

“Kreese would’ve killed me if you hadn’t shown up,” Johnny pointed out. 

“And I would’ve killed him if –”

“If you weren’t dying?” Johnny finished for him. “I thought Miyagi was all about peace and mercy.” 

“Yeah, well, he tried to kill you,” Daniel said simply. 

LaRusso’s mouth looked dry this close, probably from being unconscious for three days. It didn’t really matter, though, not when he was holding onto Johnny’s face and rationalizing the fact that he was ready to take a life because he was protecting him. 

“Must not lose to fear,” Johnny said quietly. 

“What?” 

He moved in for a gentle kiss, far too concerned about wires and needles and machines to really put all his charm into it, but Daniel kept him steady, his hand that was on his cheek sliding around to the back of his neck, two fingers in his hair. His other hand landed on Johnny’s chest – he could feel the heart monitor touching him. 

He stood up from his seat and gave himself a better angle, Daniel taking the opportunity to slide his tongue into his mouth, the insatiable idiot, and Johnny could hear the heart monitor beeping faster, and he had to pull himself away to laugh, Daniel trying to keep his own laugh hidden, a blush spreading across his face. 

“You can take that thing off,” Johnny said, looking down at the heart monitor. 

“They’ll think I’m dead, Johnny,” Daniel pointed out. 

“Here, let me,” Johnny removed the heart monitor from Daniel’s finger and put it on his own. The beeping sped up. “Okay, never mind, take it back.” 

“Okay, alright, enough,” Daniel chuckled, putting the heart monitor back where it was supposed to be. “Why don’t you just sit with me for a while?” 

“For a while?” 

Daniel rolled his eyes. “For as long as you want, John.”


End file.
